Geoscience after IT: Part H. Familiarization with managing the information base

The geoscience record stores information for later reuse. The management of bibliographic, cartographic and quantitative information have different backgrounds. All involve: deciding what to keep; structuring the record so that information can be found when needed; maintaining search tools, indexes and abstracts; defining the content by reference to metadata. The current approaches to managing the literature, spatial information and quantitative data may be subsumed in a more comprehensive object-oriented model of the information base

Effekte von Meerwasseranstieg und Sturmfluten in einem Küstenaquifer: eine 2D Modellierstudie in Norddeutschland

Climate change will affect coastal groundwater resources due to the mean sea level rise (MSLR) and an increase in storm intensity and frequency. Increasing saltwater intrusion from the subsurface as well as intrusion into aquifers from land-surface storm surges can be expected. We numerically investigate the impacts of MSLR and storm surge events in a 2D cross-sectional aquifer at the North-German coast using the coupled surface-subsurface approach of the HydroGeoSphere model. Aquifer heterogeneity is considered to investigate the influence of heterogeneity on the migration of salt plumes in the aquifer. A 1 m MSLR causes the saltwater/freshwater interface to migrate up to 1250 m landward, and the salinized area of the aquifer to expand up to 2050 m landward. Results from a storm surge simulation show that salt plume fingers develop below the flooded land surface, however, the fate of the salt plumes is highly dependent on the hydraulic conductivity of the subsurface.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [GR 3463/2-1

The influence of landscape fragmentation, expressed by the ‘Effective Mesh Size Index’, on regional patterns of vascular plant species richness in Lower Saxony, Germany

Landscape fragmentation has been identified as a major threat to biodiversity worldwide. Several landscape metrics have been developed to quantify the extent of fragmentation, of which the Effective Mesh Size Index (m(eff)) is one of the most widely used. However, its relevance for analysing the effect of fragmentation on biodiversity patterns has been rarely tested. We analysed the explanatory power of m(eff) for richness patterns of different groups of vascular plant species (all species, and species groups by naturalisation and threat status) in Lower Saxony, Germany, by using a grid of 1386 analysis units. Since we assumed species richness to be influenced by abiotic conditions and spatial autocorrelation, we used variation partitioning to separate the effects of these variables from that of fragmentation. We tested five types of m(eff) based on various fragmentation geometries. We found that m(eff) largely influenced richness of neophytes and, to a lesser extent, that of archaeophytes whilst the richness of native species was only slightly affected and threatened species were not affected. All species groups, except threatened species, showed a negative correlation with m(eff), i.e. richness was highest in highly fragmented and lowest in less fragmented grid cells. We conclude that m(eff) is a meaningful tool to explain richness patterns of non-native plant species, if relevant fragmentation geometries are chosen, but not of native and threatened plant species. Our approach may help future studies to determine correct fragmentation geometries to use with m(eff) and may facilitate the unravelling of fragmentation impacts on the landscape-scale. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.German Federal Environmental Foundation [DBU 26752